


Dave: Get some grub.

by openendings



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Fluff, xenocutlery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openendings/pseuds/openendings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I've been on this meteor for, what, an hour?, and you're already luring me to secluded locations and telling me how you watch me sleep. <i>Snuff films</i> take longer to get creepy."<br/>(Dave's first real face-to-face time with Terezi involves more knives than is strictly desirable.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dave: Get some grub.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "And that was why it was my favourite meal."  
> ...yup I reckon this fic went off-track :P

One (questionable) advantage of growing up the way Dave had was that he had gotten to see a lot of cramped, messy rooms in his time: some with their own quaint, cluttered charm; others which were undeniably shitty. The meteor's kitchen block was shitty. The benches and utensils were caked with weeks-old grub sauce stains, or if not grub sauce, then grub paste, or grub salt, or grub whatever-the-fuck. The walls were festering with newly-evolved space mould, each of which splotched the wall in a zig-zagged clump like the outline of a comic book ' _Bang!_ ', if comic books were ten feet high and made of alien toenail fungus. 

The fridge ("Thermal hull." "Fridge." " _Thermal hull_ , Dave. Your feeble attempts at snobbery are an embarrassment to your species!") was crammed with tasteless fake potatoes and stale Faygo, and it was half an hour of carton Jenga until Dave found what he was after: apple juice, crackers, and something resembling meat. He slammed them onto a plate and started raiding the cupboards for utensils. 

"I have observed your upbringing, you know," said Terezi conversationally. 

The troll girl was perched on the edge of the room's one table, legs swinging back and forth like scythes. 

Dave paused in his search, hands hovering over a drawer of unbelievably shitty wands. 

"Well, that's not remotely creepy," he said. 

He waited a moment, letting the ball drift into her court, _doof_ off her forehead, sail straight back to him. He went on: 

"I've been on this meteor for, what, an hour?, and you're already luring me to secluded locations and telling me how you watch me sleep. Snuff films take longer to get creepy." 

Terezi laughed. "You were not lured here, Dave! I have four eyewitnesses who can testify that, in the middle of Karkat's highly unhelpful welcome speech, you announced your intention to, quote, go get some grub, unquote, a choice of human idiom which..." 

"Tz, I don't actually need a time-delayed narration of my life story. Or any kind of narration. Fucking awesome as it would be." 

"Are you sure? Your life is _scandalously_ exciting, Dave." 

"Obviously. That's why it's such a bad idea. If my biography ever got leaked to the public, and people realised how boring their lives were in comparison, there'd be mass suicides. People would crowd into the streets and immolate themselves while reading extracts from Chapter Four-Hundred-and-Thirteen: Dave Discovers There Is No Real Food On The Meteor." 

"You might call it a book burning, then?" grinned Terezi. 

"Jegus, they wouldn't burn the books. Those would be fucking national treasures." 

Terezi clapped her hand to her mouth. "I have entertained such treasonous thoughts! Dave, how can I atone for this crime before I am culled?" 

"Well, in human society, we would have to tie bricks to your feet and... ah, about fucking _time_." 

Dave's elation at finding real utensils was short-lived. 

"Uh. Terezi?" 

"Yes, Dave?" 

"What the fuck are these?" 

Terezi glided behind him, her head sticking over his shoulder, her breath hot and sticky sweet. 

"These are nourishment utensils, Dave. You use them to eat without ruining your claws." 

"I don't think you get it, Tz. We have _utensils_ on Earth. We do _not_ have this weird alien shit." 

Dave held up what looked, from the top half up, to be a fork and steak knife, but whose bottom halves were also knife blades. The double-ended implements weren't even straight, rather, bending at odd angles, and their 'handles' in the middle were all of half an inch long. Holding one of those was just _asking_ for a puncture wound. Jegus, these were like the porcupines of the utensil world. Wait, no: these were the _Terezi Pyropes_ of the utensil world. 

"Like what the fuck is this for?" he said, motioning with the double-ended fork-knife. 

Terezi snorted, as if he'd asked what murder was. "Simple!" She bunched her knees together, lips pursed thoughtfully in explanation-composition. "Picture this! You are using your viendprong to eat, when suddenly you discover your grilled milkbeast is not sufficiently dissected! You flip around your viendprong, now a handy mealblade, and use it to administer the requisite stabbings." 

With his right hand, Dave raised the double ended knife. "And this baby? Why the _fuck_ would you need two blades that you can't even use at the same time? It's like something out of a safety inspector's worst nightmare. The sort of thing that'd make him wake up, cold sweats, scarred for life. He checks himself into an asylum the next day, but he never gets back his sense of 'is this a fucking bad idea or not'. A week later they find him dead. Tripped while running with scissors up a staircase, with no safety rail, while the building was on fire due to the sink leaking over all the wall sockets." He paused. "Uh, for reference, that's really fucking unsafe by human standards." 

"Dave, that is an even dumber question than your last! You are using your mealblade to eat, when suddenly you discover you are being attacked by unsuspecting prey! You proceed to stab your aggressor while stabbing your food. Although!" -- Terezi's lips curled up to eye level in what Dave would later come to think of as an 'afterthought grin' -- "At this point the difference is moot." 

"Terezi, that makes no fucking sense." 

"Dave, your culture nurtures the weak and actively discourages healthy strifing..." 

"No, not that -- though yes that is fucking weird, weird enough that Lalonde is probably getting off to this _somehow_ \-- but how the fuck can you be _attacked_ by _unsuspecting prey_? Sorry ma'am I didn't realise I was about to bludgeon you to death with this crowbar. Oh no problem, young man, you couldn't have known." 

Terezi cackled. "Amusing, but inaccurate! Your aggressors are _prey_ because you are better than them. And they are _unsuspecting_ because they think otherwise. That is Alternia, coolkid. Trial by fire. Everything you believe about yourself, trialed by fire." 

By the last few words, the troll's voice had dropped to a reverent whisper. Dave looked at her face (softened, impassioned, filled with all the sincerity of an eight year old singing Star Spangled Banner at a ball game) and was suddenly more grateful than ever that he had his shades on, that she didn't know for sure that he was looking because _fuck_ how were you supposed to _react_ to someone being that _genuine_?; was he supposed to say something pithy and sardonic now or was he supposed to do... whatever it was people did when they weren't perfecting the art of irony? 

He was still staring at her face. He had no idea how long he had been staring at her face. She cocked her head expectantly. 

"I, um. Shit. Um." Dave's jaw twitched, trying to force out a coherent sentence. "So I mean. Like. Why does this meteor even have a kitchen?" 

It was a cop out and he knew it. Terezi's face shifted ever so slightly: disappointment? Dave pressed on. 

"I mean, it's a fucking game construct, right? The meteor gets a single visit in the entire session, and the game designers thought they needed it to be the size of a small planet and have a built-in kitchen with everything you need except edible food?" 

"Sgrub does not have designers, per se!" 

"Yeah, yeah. Chicken and egg, right? Only it's a chicken giving birth to _itself_. And eating itself at the same time. Paradox space is just one feathery ouroboros clusterfuck which--" Dave paused. "Hopy shit. 'Fustercluck'. John would _kill_ for material like that." 

"I do believe your jokes were funnier when I couldn't smell you blushing," said Terezi. 

Naturally, the moment Dave noticed the aforementioned heat in his cheeks, it doubled in intensity. 

_Well, shit._ "Ah, that'd be my shitty makeup skills showing. Too dark on the foundation, too light on the mascara." 

"I'm sorry, coolkid. You cannot pull the woolbeast carcass back over my eyes." Her lamenting tone was entirely at odds with her smile. "All this time, you've secretly been capable of _emotional reactions_ , haven't you?" 

"You got me, Tz. Michelangelo was having an off day when he made me and a few specks of feelings dust got beneath the surface of my perfectly chiseled exterior." 

"If you would like, I can remove the impurities with my teeth." 

"...the _fuck_?" 

"Don't worry, coolkid! I will be gentle!" 

Dave Strider was beginning to realise that the smile did not ever turn off, and as much as he wanted that to disturb him, his mind's eye instead insisted on replaying all their terrible Pesterchum flirtation with Terezi's axe murderer grin superimposed over the memories. 

"Okay, so," he said, "just speaking hypothetically here. Can you go two minutes without announcing your intention to kill me and eat my smoking hot bod?" 

Terezi pouted. "Dave! Why would I eat you once you were _dead_?" 

"Geez, I dunno, it's not like... Wait, are you implying that--" 

"The thought intrigues you, does it not? Even as we speak, you are wondering what it would be like to be eaten alive by the most mysterious and alluring troll of all." 

"No. _Hell_ no." 

"Should I start with the fingers? Those grow back, right?" Terezi simpered innocently. 

"Get the fuck away from me!" 

"Pass me your mealblade, coolkid." 

"Gog fucking dammit," said Dave, obliging.


End file.
